White House partly right about decline in covered

7 million people the Congressional Budget Office says won’t have health insurance coverage under the Senate health care bill “don’t exist.” — White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short on July 2 on “Fox News Sunday”

Short’s claim is a variation on a recent Republican talking point: The Congressional Budget Office report did not use its most recent baseline estimates when scoring the Senate health care bill. (The “baseline” is what CBO predicts will happen if current law remains unchanged.) So the 22-million drop in coverage is based on out-of-date data, Republicans say.

We found that he has a point. By picking one baseline over another — which it did after consulting with congressional budget committees — the CBO may have altered an estimate of the people who would no longer be covered by health insurance. But Short’s specific figure and his description are imperfect.

It wouldn’t necessarily be 7 million fewer, as Short implied. It’s a mistake to equate projections for marketplace coverage under current law with the potential impact of the Senate health care bill on that enrollment, experts told us.

Experts also called Short’s claim misleading because even if the CBO used the newer baseline, insurance coverage would still drop by many millions. It also ignores the fact that the majority of coverage loss under the Senate bill would be due to changes in Medicaid, the government health insurance program for poor Americans that Obamacare expanded.

Our ruling

It is plausible that the CBO overestimated the drop in health care coverage under the Senate proposed replacement for Obamacare because it based its estimates on data from 2016 rather than 2017. But to say the projection was off by 7 million is an oversimplification.

We rate Short’s statement Half True.

IMAGES ALEX WONG/GETTY White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short questioned the CBO’s score of a GOP health care bill.